Despite Ourselves
by Kathryn Claire O'Connor
Summary: Sherlock and Sally go on their first date - and enjoy it, quite despite themselves. *second in the Working It Out series! two-shot*
1. Chapter 1

**Here's part two of the "Working It Out" series! Enjoy! Also, **I just wanted to let you know that I've got a poll up and would really appreciate some votes on it. Thanks!:)****

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><p>Sally Donavan still hadn't quite made her peace with the fact that she'd done <em>it <em>with _Freak _in her apartment two evenings ago, and now here she was going out _on a date _with him. The question of the evening was pounding loudly in her head as she waited on the sidewalk outside Tierra Brindisa for Sherlock to show up, nearly driving her crazy. _Why had she agreed to do this._

Well, for one thing, Sally reasoned, she _had _promised herself that she wouldn't do anymore "no strings attached" relationships… but she had kind of broken that promise to herself with Sherlock Holmes - unless going on this date meant that she was adding strings? Did that mean that she _hadn't _broken her promise to herself? Was that what this date was about? Sally could say that if she wanted to, couldn't she?

Her thoughts whirled around her head, plaguing her with worry and destroying her nerves even more than the wind was wreaking havoc on her kinky curls.

Another thing that wouldn't leave her alone: when Sherlock had mentioned pursuing… a relationship?… between the two of them, he'd declared pointblank that he didn't _want_ just a physical relationship. He'd talked like he wanted a… real relationship. _With her_? There was no way... But she _had _enjoyed his company after that undercover arrest she'd done - and the texting they'd done over the couple of days between then and now had been kind of nice too.

But _why was she here_?

Sally was already edging towards a mental panic, and so she jumped violently when a deep voice whispered near her ear, "Waiting to seduce another villain, sergeant?"

Too out of it to think before she reacted, Sally elbowed the man in the stomach in the split second before she registered _who _she was assaulting.

"Sherlock! You scared me!"

"So I noticed," the consulting detective said, wincing as he straightened up, arms staying wrapped around his bruised midsection. "My apologies."

"Oh, you're… _I'm… _Sorry," Sally stammered, the word feeling unusually thick on her tongue when it was directed towards Sherlock Holmes. "Are you alright?"

"Nothing sustained that will require medical attention, I assure you," Sherlock said, smiling lightly when Sally's eyes finally met his. "No harm done." He gestured towards the restaurant behind them, suggesting, "Shall we go in? The owner is expecting us."

"I didn't think you could make reservations here?" Sally said, noting when Sherlock held the door open for her as they entered the restaurant.

Sherlock grinned, answering proudly, "I'm a special friend of Angelo's."

"What did you do for him?" Sally asked dryly, looking around the warmly lit room before Sherlock motioned her towards a secluded table.

"Got him off of a triple murder by proving that he was a thief instead. He's overly grateful."

Sally rolled her eyes and settled into the seat across from… her date? Oh heck no, Sherlock Holmes was _actually _her _date_! The thought hit her anew and she tensed, mentally scrambling to find a reason to leave the table and flee from the entire situation. _What was she doing here_?

Ever so observant, Sherlock said carefully, "Don't leave yet, Sergeant Donavan." Sally pressed her lips together and stared at him across the table, trying not to let on how near she was to loosing her mind as Sherlock continued talking in a hushed tone. "You said that you didn't want just sex in another relationship, and I said the same thing, yet what happened Friday night did in fact happen. I feel rather… as if I was somehow… wrong… in that, and I want to make it up to you… with dinner. Get to know you in a way where perhaps we could be… civil to one another."

"I seem to remember 'romantic' being the word that was tossed around Friday," Sally said under her breath, just barely managing to keep her jaw unclenched.

"Yes," Sherlock acknowledged, a downright… kind… expression on his face - even in his eyes - as he cocked his head to the side and watched her. "But saying that now wouldn't be wise, considering the fact that you're currently about to have a panic attack."

"I am not!"

"You are," Sherlock argued gently.

"Okay, fine, I am, but don't tell me that this isn't weird, Freak! This is us - you and me! - _on a date_!"

"Then don't think of it as a date," Sherlock answered. "Think of it as a… an apology dinner between friends."

"For what? Having sex? We're two sane adults, Sherlock; it's fine."

He considered her for a second before he seemed to come to a conclusion, and a boyish smirk tilted his mouth before he joked, "And in my defense, you _were _dressed as a prostitute."

"For a case!" Sally argued, but it was without the usual malice in her tone, replaced by something friendlier.

The banter set them both a little bit at ease, and it was then that Angelo came over and placed a menu before each of them, swinging an arm around the consulting detective's shoulders and asking conspiratorially as if Sally couldn't hear him, "Is a candle allowed for this girl, my old friend?" Sherlock colored amusingly as Angelo cajoled softly, "More romantic…"

"I…"

Sherlock didn't want to make her uncomfortable, Sally realized, surprised by the sudden, highly unusual congeniality of her feelings for him. So she rescued him a bit, saying, "That'll be fine, Angelo."

Angelo pressed his palms together gleefully, declaring, "wonderful," and a minute later candlelight was flickering gaily onto Sherlock and Sally's expressions as they looked over their menus.

Keeping his gaze locked on the paper in front of him, Sherlock asked, "But what if what we did isn't okay?"

"What do you mean?" Sally asked, looking at him in confusion.

Sherlock took a deep breath, but absolutely refused to meet her eyes as he expounded, "What if… this… and Friday evening… doesn't work…between… us?"

Sally blinked before lowering her eyes to her own menu and sorting that out for a minute in her mind before she said anything. "Well, I suppose things would be a bit strange between us. We probably wouldn't be on the best of terms… In short, nothing would really change at all from what it was Thursday before this whole darn thing started."

Sherlock snorted, and Sally could tell that her response had granted him a measure of relief from thoughts that - the realization hit her suddenly - must be as tumultuous as her own.

Neither one of them were entirely comfortable with this - and yet they were both here anyway. Neither one of them could really see this going anywhere - and yet they wanted to see if it would. Neither one of them was really used to liking the other on any level - and yet they were intrigued by each other. They weren't used to getting along - and yet they found themselves enjoying the other's company.

Sally, for one, didn't like working with Freak, and yet, throughout the course of the evening, she found herself wanting to kiss him again.

By the time they were once again standing outside of the restaurant at the end of the night, Sally found herself smiling. When they weren't trying to verbally slaughter one another, she realized that she actually enjoyed the consulting detective's company.

The… date… had been nice. _Sherlock _had actually been… _chivalrous. _He'd been _entertaining_. He'd been _kind_. He'd been _sweet. _He'd _paid for her dinner_. Yes, he was Freak, but Sally was starting to realize that there was a nice side to Freak when he wasn't so darn focused on one case or another.

She liked that side of him - _really _liked it. The fact that she liked it so much - that she was starting to like _him _so much - terrified her - but she wanted to see it, him, again like this. Heck, she kind of wanted a corner on it.

But should she say so? How to do it?

"Sherlock?" Sally spoke up, her voice soft with what she didn't want to acknowledge was uncertainty as the door to Tierra Brindisa closed behind them for the night.

The consulting detective turned attentively towards her, eyebrows raised slightly, sharp profile gently lit by the soft light filtering through the restaurant windows. "Yes?"

"I… had a good time tonight."

He smiled, the same gentle expression he'd been employing this evening instead of a blank expression or the near-sneer that was almost his fixed expression at a crime scene - and in most of his previous dealings with her. "Good; I'm glad."

He cocked his head to the side, studying her for a second, and she lost her nerve for whatever else she was going to say. Seeing this, Sherlock turned to the street and stuck his hand out to hail a cab.

Sally was loosing her already waning window of opportunity.

_Now or never; spit it out, Donavan._


	2. Chapter 2

"Sherlock."

Sally's voice came out a little sharper - a little more frantic, even - than she must have meant it to, and both she and Sherlock noticed. When the cab pulled up to the curb, Sherlock waved it on and turned back to her, still attentive, but knowing that his eyes were a bit sharper; he couldn't help it, that was what happened when he deduced people. He saw an edge of panic in her dark eyes, and more than a little uncertainty.

But why?

"Is something wrong, Sergeant Donavan?" he asked carefully.

She flinched, requesting uncertainly - almost sheepishly, not that the adjective would everhave been applied to her in his mind. "Can you not… call me that? At least not right now?"

"Alright… Sally. What's on your mind?"

A very long pause preceded a word whispered so softly that Sherlock almost didn't catch it. "You." And then she began to stumble over her words in what he assumed was a desperate attempt to make him understand what she meant. "Us. This. What we're doing here. This date. Another date? Talking to you. Being with you. Liking you. Kissing you. Not knowing how I feel about you - about this. About us. You implied Friday at my house that you like me, and I don't know what to do with that. I don't know how I feel about that. I don't know how I feel about you. I-"

Sherlock abruptly cut her off, kissing her suddenly, swallowing her gasp of surprise before he pulled back and asked, "Does that help you decide?"

It took her a second to recover her wits, but after a moment Sally asked, "Decide what?"

"If you want to… pursue something… with me?"

"That," Sally answered just a bit tartly, tone softened by the nervous smile flitting carefully about the edges of her lips. "Is what I was going to say before I was so rudely interrupted. I don't know for sure what this is that I feel for you, Sherlock Holmes, but I wouldn't be here tonight if I wasn't willing to give this a try. I knew that coming here - that I was going to see how tonight went and make something of a decision based on that."

"So tonight was an experiment then?" he asked curiously, a thread of pleasure popping up in him at the idea of her thinking so.

"Yeah, I guess you could look at it that way."

"I already was," he admitted. She grinned, and he returned the gesture, taking the moment to gather his courage enough to ask - nervous in his own right, "And how did tonight go, in your opinion?"

Sally's grin brightened, but she didn't answer yet, asking instead, "What is your opinion, Freeeaaaak?"

Sherlock swallowed, his nervousness increasing as the old put-down fell, albeit rather teasingly, from her tongue, and he shifted from foot to foot before deciding to be brutally honest. "I know what I think, and - maybe even for once in my life - what I feel. I like you; I have even before Friday, and I meant what I said then. If you're willing to give me a chance, I'm willing to do what is admittedly my very meager best romantically to win your affections." He took a deep breath, turning it back onto her as he added, "But that's of no use unless you're in agreement with the idea. I enjoyed our time both Friday and tonight, but you never answered me Friday when I brought up the idea of a relationship. I find that, considering how these past couple of days have gone, that leaves me rather…" Sally could not possibly understand how much it pained him to use this word, no matter how fitting it was. "Confused… and anxious, as well."

"I never did answer you Friday, did I?" Sherlock shook his head mutely and Sally crossed her arms over her chest, saying, "I guess that's because I didn't want it to seem like I'd made a snap decision - but I guess I still did. I didn't realize it until just now, but I did. I'm… sorry… that you've been so nervous, but, if it makes you feel any better, I've been just as nervous since we set up this date."

Sherlock's eyebrows drew together and he asked, "Why would that make me feel better?" before he realized that he'd interrupted her. "Sorry, go on."

Sally grinned at him for some reason and obediently continued, "But I guess I knew even Friday how this would turn out on my end, and I was just so shocked with myself that I forgot to pass on the information to you." Here she took a deep breath, steeling herself before she revealed the verdict that Sherlock had been waiting for. "If you're really as willing to try this as I am, then I guess we'd better give it a shot."

Sherlock grinned happily, intertwining his fingers with hers and giving her a chaste kiss. When his eyes met hers, he caught a flicker of something in their depths, and he called her out on it.

"I'm glad you agree… even if it is despite yourself."

Sally ducked her head, saying, "Yeah," but when her eyes shot back up to his, they were flashing with an imitation of the haughtiness that he was used to from her as she pointed out, "But I'm not the only one, am I, Mr. Holmes?"

Sherlock blinked, surprised at being caught, but not objecting to what they both knew was the truth. "No," Sherlock agreed, feeling unusually tongue-tied by the words coming out of his mouth. "Despite both of ourselves, we may just possibly, maybe be…"

The words in his head very nearly _couldn't _come out of his mouth, but Sally sensed what they were and supplied them with a little more ease than he could, an admittedly pretty flush coming into her cheeks. "… Falling… for one another."

"Possibly," Sherlock replied, feeling rather out of his comfort zone.

"Well," Sally said, turning away for just as long as it took to hail a cab. "Come on then, _boyfriend_, let's go find out."


End file.
